Mail communication systems (for purposes herein such systems include postal services as well as private carrier services) are designed to provide for the delivery of physical mail items. These systems include mailers (senders of mail items), service providers (carriers and postal operators and their suppliers) and recipients. When a mailer sends a physical mail item (letter, flat, or parcel) he or she is typically interested in 1) knowing that the mail item has been delivered, 2) knowing the time of delivery and 3) in many cases having some (hopefully legally admissible) proof of delivery. Moreover, the mailer may also be interested in checking on the status of a yet to be delivered mail item particularly if there is some concern that the mail item may be lost. Traditional postal and carrier systems address this need by offering premium “track & trace” services. These traditional track and trace services assign a unique carrier generated number to each mail item which is used to track the mailpiece through the carrier distribution system. Confirmation of final delivery of the mail item is accomplished by either providing the sender with a physical document containing information about delivery or alternatively allowing the sender to access a web site of the service provider where the unique carrier generated number can be found if the mail item has been delivered. Additionally, inquiries regarding mail item tracking status are checked via the unique carrier assigned number.
One of the major problems of these traditional track and trace services is that the sender must go to the carrier's retail location to deliver the mail item personally in order to get the unique carrier generated number. Additionally, while some carriers have now introduced the ability to obtain a unique carrier generated number over the internet which can be applied to the mailpiece by the sender, this approach has the downside of requiring the sender to be connected to the carrier's website via the internet whenever use of the track and trace service is required. Furthermore, in the web-based system just described, the carrier loses control of ensuring that a particular unique carrier generated number was actually affixed to a specific mailpiece.
Each of the aforementioned United States Patent Applications address one solution to some of the problems set forth above by having the sender provide on a mail item a unique sender generated identifier consisting of a unique number and an electronic address such as an e-mail address of the sender. This identifier can then be used by the carrier service to provide information to the e-mail address about, for example, the delivery of the mail item. The problem with this solution is that it relies on the sender generated unique number for tracking the mailpiece. Carriers may consider this to be unacceptable since they would have to rely on the quality of the sender generated unique number for tracking mail items through their system.
In addition to the above, yet another problem exists in an office building environment where mail is generated by individual office workers and sent to a mailroom for final processing. That is, the function of the mail room is to collect mail items created by office workers, finish the mail items by applying postage thereon and submit the mail items to postal operators (or other carrier) for processing and delivery. Mail rooms are typically equipped with mailing machines, postage meters, scales and other equipment for mechanization of such finishing work. Conventional mailing machines are capable of automatic feeding, sealing and metering of mixed mail items. However, currently there is no effective way of processing value added services mail items (mail that is accounted for such as proof of deposit, receipt, or delivery—also referred to previously as premium service mail items) through a mailing machine. Thus, these premium service mail items have to be created and processed in essentially a manual way.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method that allows office workers to obtain track and trace and/or confirmation of special services delivery of a mail item in a more automated manner than the prior art systems.